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2009-12-14

We indoctrinate even children into the belief that selective breaking of laws is beneficial for society as a whole. But it is a lie. For example, counterfeiting is illegal. If it is widespread, the value of money decreases, which is incredibly damaging to everyone except early recipients of the counterfeit funds. But government counterfeiting happens on a massive scale, through the Federal Reserve. Whole schools of economics exist in government-funded graduate schools to teach supposed mechanisms by which this is beneficial, but the truth is it is just as destructive when government does it as it is when private individuals do it. The result is a dollar that has lost 95% of its value since 1913, after previously holding its value for several centuries (since even before the establishment of the U.S.).

Government as we know it is essentially just an institution that holds a monopoly on breaking laws. They routinely violate the rights to life, liberty, and property. They even claim the power to make law, determining that some crimes are permissible (perhaps only by certain people or under certain circumstances) and declaring other wholly permissible acts to be crimes.

In the English common law tradition which continued to influence this country even as late as the mid 1800's, law was something immutable to be discovered and reasoned about by man, but not created or changed.

2009-12-07

Wait - if you don't believe in forcing some of your neighbors to work to pay for substandard health insurance for some of your other neighbors, that makes you a supporter of slavery? You mean opposing involuntary servitude makes one a supporter of slavery?

I think I must be behind on my Newspeak.

I'll submit to whatever hair-brained scheme the rest of you come up with. I promise. I just really would life for people not to enslave my neighbors in my name. I'll submit; just please don't make me guilty of doing it to my neighbors and children.

And also, as long as I have the legal right to say what's on my mind, I'll keeping pointing out that economists like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard proved decades ago that collectivist schemes like this will always be suboptimal, in books like "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth," and "Power and Market." The emperor really does have no clothes. Again, if you want to put these yokes and shackles on me, all right: here are my hands and neck, and I'll stoop down. But my neighbors and children are innocent. Please don't claim to represent me while making them suffer.

2009-11-07

Murray Rothbard proved all interventions into the economy are a net loss, in his book Power and Market.

I don't insist people have to believe this (even though it's proved), but doesn't it seem just a bit unfair that my money is confiscated to pay for this stuff that I know can't possibly work??? Whatever happened to not forcing our religious beliefs on others, the liberal creed? Because as near as I can tell, this whole thing works on blind faith. There's no evidence. You just believe that the winner of the popularity contest can magically create more jobs than he destroys by infringing on people's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What is the basis for this claim? How could you ever compare, since there is no control for an experiment? It's obviously not scientific. What is the theoretical mechanism by which this is theorized to work?

There's no way to prove it with a scientific experiment, and any investigation of theory will universally point to the idea that all of this is a net loss. Looks like a cult to me. Can I have my freedom from these religious beliefs?

Stimulus is for lab rats. Not free people. Every regulation destroys an economic opportunity (not necessarily for the action which can no longer occur, but possibly for the entrepreneur who would've profitably and more efficiently addressed the problem without government). Every intervention destroys wealth. Every wealth transfer transfers wealth away from the optimal growth it otherwise would have caused, to things that we value less than what we would've purchased voluntarily.

I don't mean to single out liberals ... conservatives, or at least Republicans and some people calling themselves conservatives, were also all about stimulus during the last 4 to 8 years, especially during 2008. Sometimes they called it a bailout.

2009-11-02

I heard a radio spot this morning from Texas Realtors urging me to vote on a number of "proposals" to make real estate appraisal "more fair." Little warning bells went off in my head, of course. I do not plan to vote, but I thought I'd glance at the issues and see what's up and perhaps offer a brief analysis.

First of all, anyone involved in politics always has a skewed understanding of fair. Let me explain fair: if you don't take anything that doesn't belong to you, or restrict what I can do with what is my own, or hurt me, that's fair. If you are taking my money, that's not fair, no matter how much "reform" or other excrement you smear on it.

So, fair would be repealing all real estate taxes. "More fair," I suppose, would be an across the board cut in tax rates, which I would support, and maybe even vote for if it didn't involve voting for a specific liar -- I mean "person" -- promising the alleged policy change. Heck, even a selective reduction in some people's tax rates would be more fair, and I'd support that even if I wasn't going to get a direct benefit myself. At least it'd be a benefit to the economy, which could sorely use it right now.

Unfortunately, nothing of the sort seems to be on the table. Proposition 2 might result in a lower tax rate for some people, and comes the closest to being something I could support. But I've never heard of anybody in the situation that proposition 2 describes. It makes noise like it wants to protect innocent homeowners, but it smells like it wants to protect real estate developers who monkey around at your city council meeting to get their property zoned a certain way for lower taxes while they wait to decide what to do with it. Ever read your city council minutes? Disgusting enslavement politics. Almost everything on the agenda, in my experience, involves case by case changes of the "zone" for pieces of property, where everything you might ever want to do requires approval. These are the people who give you grief when you want to use your property for something of your design, but easily sway the council to bow to their will because they allegedly help the local economy. Forget it. Not interested in helping such powermongers for something so vague and slanted.

Propositions 3 and 5 are far, far worse. They rest on an insane and destructive assumption: that your local government wants to screw you, and the higher level of government is here to help, and that centralization and standardization across the state will help lots of people. Note again this is cloaked in helping people to retain more of their wealth, i.e., libertarian motivation, but we should know that increased centralization never helps. What you want is a patchwork of differing local regulations so that if your locality is too much more thieving than the next one over, you can move. (Actually what you want is differing competing local regulations within the SAME locality, but if wishes were horses ...) Centralization regulations always function as a means for powers to collude without the threat of competition. And so in this case. The criminal gang in Austin wants to bring all the little gangs under its control, because power feels good when exercised, especially if you can get people to worship you for being their "benefactor." The little gangs actually support the centralization because then they can collude under cover; they will run the much larger centralized show and set regulations that are worse. Example: the Federal Reserve, far from forcing banks to keep more reasonable reserve standards, allows the banks to collude and set reserve standards lower than the previously freer market allowed.

Want to make my real estate appraisals more fair? Give me a free market in government, from which I can choose the option I want, or create my own if it does not exist. In other words, allow me to secede. In other words, allow me to be free.

2009-10-28

Secession is equivalent to freedom, and is the right of all sentient beings. People without the right of secession are not free, regardless of whether or not they get to participate in popularity contests to determine the king(s) for the next olympiad.

One world government is fine as long as there is UNANIMOUS agreement.

If you force somebody to be subject to your government (not just use your government to enforce your rights to life, liberty, and property, but REQUIRE people through coercion or threats or actual violence to be citizens of or subject to your government against their will), then you are a manstealer; you have committed a crime against their liberty. You have enslaved them. Do you believe in slavery, or do you believe that people should be free and have the right to self-government?

Every person of age and reason possesses, at all times, rights to life, liberty, and property, including the right to defend those rights and the right to contract with an institution to help defend them on their behalf. This right is expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." If you don't believe these things, then you should not celebrate July 4th.

People have the right to skip out on the system if it doesn't secure their rights, and especially if it is violating their rights. They have the right to decide, for themselves, if they want to participate in your rights-securing plan or not, because they have the right to create and participate in a system which "to them [not to you] shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Speaking for my family, the only one world government which we would endorse would be the direct reign of Jesus Christ, administered by Jesus Christ and not by the compulsion of man. Since all other proposals conflict with this, we do not approve of them, and therefore while we are living and holding this opinion, one world government cannot be achieved without violating our rights.

2009-10-27

I recently saw the suggestion that we can fix the problems of the U.S. federal government by "kicking them all out": firing every single incumbent congressman and banning corporate lobbying. Making corporate lobbying illegal strikes me as somewhat naive and definitely restrictive of rights.

As Walter Williams often says, the government shouldn't have the legal power to do bad things ... then the problem of lobbyists influencing it to do such things will go away.

I don't think term limits of one term will fix the problem, either, whether it happens from statute or the vote.

I think the only way to limit the power of government to encroach upon its citizens' rights to life, liberty, and property is for that government to be checked by alternate, competing institutions "instituted among men to secure these rights ... and whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (For those who might not recognize it, this is a near quote from the United States Declaration of Independence. You should really read it sometime. If you don't believe in this stuff, you really shouldn't be celebrating on July 4th.)

If you don't think the U.S. federal government is adequately securing your rights, then you do morally have and should legally have the right to use your own resources to establish your own rights-securing institution, including the right to delegate enforcement of your rights to others who work on your behalf, the right to subscribe to such services from a company, the right to collaborate with and work with other people to build your institution as you see fit. The government does not morally have and should not legally have the right to force people to pay for its services and prevent them from receiving such services from other providers.

The problems are:

government is a monopoly

security for the rights of life, liberty, and property is a socialized service, instead of being provided by a free market

government grants to itself the legal right to take actions which are not morally right (i.e., violation of the rights of people to life, liberty, and property)

Personally, I think the biggest committer of crimes against me and my neighbors, is the U.S. federal government. I would like to see everyone kicked out of it and to leave the offices empty, not repopulate them and play Russian roulette and hope (against all evidence) that somehow it will come out better this time, and that if it doesn't we can still somehow improve it in the future through the democratic process and constant monitoring and tweaking of statutes and regulations. At the very least, give the rest of us the right to opt out, even if you want to keep it.

2009-10-22

Stimulus is for lab rats, not economies of free people. Give us freedom. Man shall be neither free nor prosperous until the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last bureaucrat.

What we need is for the government to quit causing the boom-bust cycle. Given a free economy, the resources we have will be allocated optimally for satisfying human wants and producing wealth, making us all better off.

Instead, we get items like the Federal Reserve, and "stimulus" packages when it goes wrong. Naked transfers of money and power; blatant infringements on liberty.

If I were free, I would be able to keep the dollars I earn and use them to bless this society in a way profitable for me and others. If I were free, I would be able to start a business of my choice with no permission or regulation from the government, and again I would thus be able to bless this society to my own profit and for the benefit of others.

If you won't do it for me, at least do it for my neighbors: give us freedom. Give people permission to get out of this mess! Give people permission to say "this government is no longer acting to secure my rights to life, liberty, and property, and I renounce my association with it and will establish another, with my neighbors, which shall have its foundation laid on such principles and be organized in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Government cannot solve the problem. The United States government is the problem. If you do not like theft, murder, and infringement of liberty, then the biggest criminal in the world and the source of the vast majority of all of these things which you do not like is the United States government.